This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities, at different moments in time: Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, Colonial Mexico City, Enlightenment and Romantic Paris, Existential and Revolutionary St. Petersburg, Roaring Berlin, Modernist Vienna, and bustling Buenos Aires. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation); authors we will read include Boccaccio, Dante, Sor Juana, Montesquieu, Baudelaire, Gogol, Irmgard Keun, Freud, and Borges. Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take the course for a Letter Grade.

What, if anything, does reading literature do for our lives? What can literature offer that other forms of writing cannot? Can fictions teach us anything? Can they make people more moral? Why do we take pleasure in tragic stories? This course introduces students to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. It addresses key questions about the value of literature, philosophical puzzles about the nature of fiction and literary language, and ways that philosophy and literature interact. Readings span literature, film, and philosophical theories of art. Authors may include Sophocles, Dickinson, Toni Morrison, Proust, Woolf, Walton, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Students master close reading techniques and philosophical analysis, and write papers combining the two. This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.

ILAC 193:The Cinema of Pedro Almodovar

Pedro Almodóvar is one of the most recognizable auteur directors in the world today. His films express a hybrid and eclectic visual style and the blurring of frontiers between mass and high culture. Special attention is paid to questions of sexuality and the centering of usually marginalized characters. This course studies Pedro Almodóvar's development from his directorial debut to the present, from the "shocking" value of the early films to the award-winning mastery of the later ones. Prerequisite: ability to understand spoken Spanish. Readings in English. Midterm and final paper can be in English. Majors should write in Spanish.

ILAC 200E:War and the Modern Novel

From the turn of the 19th century to well into the 20th century, novelists developed the theme of alienation and the decline of civilization. Along with the fall of centuries-old empires, World War I brought about the collapse of traditional European values and the dissociation of the subject. The aestheticizing of violence and the ensuing insecurity inaugurated the society of totally administered life, based on universal suspicion and pervasive guilt. The seminar will study narrative responses to these developments in some of the foremost authors of the 20th century from several European literatures: Knut Hamsun, Joseph Roth, Ernst Jünger, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, Curzio Malaparte, Thomas Mann, Mercè Rodoreda, Antonio Lobo Antunes, and Jaume Cabré. Taught in English.

Last offered: Winter 2018
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ILAC 241:Fiction Workshop in Spanish

Spanish and Spanish American short stories approached through narrative theory and craft. Assignments are creative in nature and focus on the formal elements of fiction (e.g. character and plot development, point of view, creating a scene, etc.). Students will write, workshop, and revise an original short story throughout the term. No previous experience with creative writing is required. Readings may include works by Ayala, Bolaño, Borges, Clarín, Cortázar, García Márquez, Piglia, Rodoreda, and others. Enrollment limited.

Last offered: Winter 2018
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ILAC 243:Latin American Aesthetics

As the branch of philosophy that deals with the principles of beauty and artistic taste, aesthetics is, purportedly, universal. The course interrogates its conspicuous omission of Latin American theorization and cultural production. Three thematic axes are vanguardia, colonialidad, and populismo; a central concern is aesthetic responses to precariousness. Argentine, Brazilian, Chilean, Colombian, and Cuban essayism and visual arts from the mid 20th century to the present, notably origenismo, neo-baroque, and indigenismo. In collaboration with a cognate course at UC Berkeley. Taught in Spanish.nNOTE: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit.

Last offered: Autumn 2017
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ED

ILAC 263:Visions of the Andes

Themes like "people," "revolt," "community," "utopia" and "landscape" are central to 20th century Andean narrative and its accompanying critical apparatus. The course reviews major works of Andean literature to reconsider the aesthetic and intellectual legacy of modernity and modernization in the region. We discuss changes in recent literature and film. Special attention is payed to post-conflict Peru and Evo Morales' Bolivia.

Last offered: Autumn 2018
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 277:Senior Seminar: Spanish and Society - From Novel to Film

Open to seniors in ILAC and Spanish; juniors by permission of instructor. All students must contact instructor to obtain an enrollment code. How are film and novels alike? How are they different? Can the study of cinematographic adaptation of novels help us understand better the specific nature of literature and that of film? What does it mean to be 'faithful' to a work of literature in a new medium? To address these questions, the course combines a selection of major Latin American novels and plays, as well as a panorama of Latin American cinematography, from 1960s's films to contemporary productions.

ILAC 278A:Senior Seminar: Shepherds and Butchers, or The Iberian Pastoral

Open to seniors in ILAC and Spanish; juniors by permission of instructor. What does pastoral literature -- with its lovesick shepherds, acts of self-immolation, and aquatic nymphs -- have to do with imperial expansion? For early modern Portugal and Spain, it formed a surprisingly indispensable (if somewhat perverse) foundation for their respective colonial projects. From the earliest African slave markets to the rise of the modern novel, the pastoral is everywhere, a true companion of empire. Through a close analysis and discussion of early modern texts in Spanish and Portuguese (translations of Portuguese texts will be made available), as well as some theoretical/philosophical texts in English, we will explore the bizarre place of the pastoral in early modern Iberian Empire and reckon with its impact on our own sense of the colonial past. Authors include: Joanot Martorell, Francisco de Sá de Miranda, Garcilaso de la Vega, Joan Boscà, Jorge Montemor, Luisa Sigea, Luís de Camões, and Miguel de Cervantes. NOTE: This course must be taken for a minimum of 5 units and a letter grade to be eligible for WIM credit.